If you were one of the more than 15,000 people that enjoyed any one of the avant-garde concerts at the buzzed-about New Orleans Music Box on the Bywater neighborhood’s Piety Street in 2011 – 2012, then more than likely you were sad to see it close last summer. But the folks at New Orleans Airlift — the arts organization that created the “Shantytown Music Lab” out of a vacant lot where a recently-collapsed 18th century cottage stood — are bringing the Music Box back to life. They are planning to design modular versions of the upcycled music “houses” for multiple neighborhoods throughout the city, and even take the show on the road.

The original New Orleans Music Box on Piety Street.

After definitive success with Bywater community members, as well as accolades in the national art world, Airlift launched a Kickstarter campaign last month to crowd-source funding for the next phase of the Music Box. In fact, Airlift curators Delaney Martin, Jay Pennington (a/k/a DJ Rusty Lazer) and New York’s Swoon explain that the unique musical playground known as the Music Box was actually just the first part of their larger master plan; a project they call Dithyrambalina.

Each of the mobile Music Boxes, Airlift says, “will be a sonic playground, performance venue and laboratory for musical architecture in New Orleans.” Most importantly, the Dithyrambalina “labs” operate on the foundation of collaboration. Rather than an institutionally-selected group of artists performing for any given community, the program invites local community members to participate with guest musicians and visual artists from both New Orleans and abroad at the Music Boxes. Together, participants build the houses and instruments, play with them, host performances in them, and even record from them.

Over the course of the year that the first Music Box on Piety Street was active, famed musicians such as Mannie Fresh (of No Limit / Cash Money), Ben Jaffe (of Preservation Hall Jazz Band), Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth), Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier (of Destroy Build Destroy), Japanther and more collaborated with local and visiting participants, including youth groups like the Bywater Boys. New Orleans’ electro-mad-scientist, Quintron, even created the Shantytown Orchestra as the “house band.”

Dithyrambalina: The Music Box and Beyond Video

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/68877038[/vimeo]

The next step now for Airlift is to build a Dithyrambalina village, and they invite anyone to participate. If building human-size instruments out of recycled materials, or playing them is not your game, you can still contribute to the project by making a donation on the Kickstarter web page, or by volunteering. Don’t live in New Orleans? Once the modular versions of the Music Box are complete, you might even help by co-hosting a Dithyrambalina house in your town.

Although this phase’s Kickstarter campaign closes on the night of October 30, you can still contribute to the Dithyrambalina project by contacting New Orleans Airlift here. However, those that donate to the Kickstarter campaign will receive a bevy of rare and unique gifts in return, such as free copies of recordings from some of the Music Box’s brightest musical moments. For more information on the program, visit www.dithyrambalina.com or www.neworleansairlift.org.